Crucifixion

Crucifixion is an ancient instrument of capital punishment which involves the condemned person being tied or nailed to a cross and left to die slowly from asphyxiation and exhaustion, with the execution taking hours or days. The practice was employed in Persia, Carthage, and Macedon before the Roman Empire would use it to punish slaves, pirates, and enemies of the state in what was meant to be the most shameful way to die. Spartacus was crucified after his slave revolt was crushed by the Romans, and Jesus was crucified around 30 CE for his "heresy" (which would later become the religion of Christianity). In 337, Constantine the Great banned the practice out of reverence for Jesus, but another religion that revered Jesus - Islam - used crucifixion as a style of execution for robbers who killed their victims (they did not believe that Jesus was the son of God, and did not believe that he was crucified). The Umayyad Caliphate would use the punishment, and the punishment was later used by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Burma, Sudan, and the Islamic State into the 21st century. Before and during the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan used crucifixion as an execution after learning about it from the Bible, and the execution was used against an Australian prisoner-of-war during World War II.